The Skin of Our Teeth

by Thornton Wilder

That’s not true.

  ANTROBUS:

  In his own person, with self-condemnation, but cold and proud.

  Wait a minute. I have something to say, too. It’s not wholly his fault that he wants to strangle me in this scene. It’s my fault, too. He wouldn’t feel that way unless there were something in me that reminded him of all that. He talks about an emptiness. Well, there’s an emptiness in me, too. Yes,—work, work, work,—that’s all I do. I’ve ceased to live. No wonder he feels that anger coming over him.

  MRS. ANTROBUS:

  There! At least you’ve said it.

  SABINA:

  We’re all just as wicked as we can be, and that’s the God’s truth.

  MRS. ANTROBUS:

  Nods a moment, then comes forward; quietly:

  Come. Come and put your head under some cold water.

  SABINA:

  In a whisper.

  I’ll go with him. I’ve known him a long while. You have to go on with the play. Come with me.

  HENRY starts out with SABINA, but turns at the exit and says to ANTROBUS:

  HENRY:

  Thanks. Thanks for what you said. I’ll be all right tomorrow. I won’t lose control in that place. I promise.

  Exeunt HENRY and SABINA.

  ANTROBUS starts toward the front door, fastens it.

  MRS. ANTROBUS: goes up stage and places the chair close to table.

  MRS. ANTROBUS:

  George, do I see you limping?

  ANTROBUS:

  Yes, a little. My old wound from the other war started smarting again. I can manage.

  MRS. ANTROBUS:

  Looking out of the window.

  Some lights are coming on,—the first in seven years. People are walking up and down looking at them. Over in Hawkins’ open lot they’ve built a bonfire to celebrate the peace. They’re dancing around it like scarecrows.

  ANTROBUS:

  A bonfire! As though they hadn’t seen enough things burning.—Maggie,—the dog died?

  MRS. ANTROBUS:

  Oh, yes. Long ago. There are no dogs left in Excelsior.—You’re back again! All these years. I gave up counting on letters. The few that arrived were anywhere from six months to a year late.

  ANTROBUS:

  Yes, the ocean’s full of letters, along with the other things.

  MRS. ANTROBUS:

  George, sit down, you’re tired.

  ANTROBUS:

  No, you sit down. I’m tired but I’m restless.

  Suddenly, as she comes forward:

  Maggie! I’ve lost it. I’ve lost it.

  MRS. ANTROBUS:

  What, George? What have you lost?

  ANTROBUS:

  The most important thing of all: The desire to begin again, to start building.

  MRS. ANTROBUS:

  Sitting in the chair right of the table.

  Well, it will come back.

  ANTROBUS:

  At the window.

  I’ve lost it. This minute I feel like all those people dancing around the bonfire—just relief. Just the desire to settle down; to slip into the old grooves and keep the neighbors from walking over my lawn.—Hm. But during the war,—in the middle of all that blood and dirt and hot and cold—every day and night, I’d have moments, Maggie, when I saw the things that we could do when it was over. When you’re at war you think about a better life; when you’re at peace you think about a more comfortable one. I’ve lost it. I feel sick and tired.

  MRS. ANTROBUS:

  Listen! The baby’s crying.

  I hear Gladys talking. Probably she’s quieting Henry again. George, while Gladys and I were living here—like moles, like rats, and when we were at our wits’ end to save the baby’s life—the only thought we clung to was that you were going to bring something good out of this suffering. In the night, in the dark, we’d whisper about it, starving and sick.—Oh, George, you’ll have to get it back again. Think! What else kept us alive all these years? Even now, it’s not comfort we want. We can suffer whatever’s necessary; only give us back that promise.

  Enter SABINA with a lighted lamp. She is dressed as in Act I.

  SABINA:

  Mrs. Antrobus . . .

  MRS. ANTROBUS:

  Yes, Sabina?

  SABINA:

  Will you need me?

  MRS. ANTROBUS:

  No, Sabina, you can go to bed.

  SABINA:

  Mrs. Antrobus, if it’s all right with you, I’d like to go to the bonfire and celebrate seeing the war’s over. And, Mrs. Antrobus, they’ve opened the Gem Movie Theatre and they’re giving away a hand-painted soup tureen to every lady, and I thought one of us ought to go.

  ANTROBUS:

  Well, Sabina, I haven’t any money. I haven’t seen any money for quite a while.

  SABINA:

  Oh, you don’t need money. They’re taking anything you can give them. And I have some . . . some . . . Mrs. Antrobus, promise you won’t tell anyone. It’s a little against the law. But I’ll give you some, too.

  ANTROBUS:

  What is it?

  SABINA:

  I’ll give you some, too. Yesterday I picked up a lot of . . . of beef-cubes!

  MRS. ANTROBUS turns and says calmly:

  MRS. ANTROBUS:

  But, Sabina, you know you ought to give that in to the Center downtown. They know who needs them most.

  SABINA:

  Outburst.

  Mrs. Antrobus, I didn’t make this war. I didn’t ask for it. And, in my opinion, after anybody’s gone through what we’ve gone through, they have a right to grab what they can find. You’re a very nice man, Mr. Antrobus, but you’d have got on better in the world if you’d realized that dog-eat-dog was the rule in the beginning and always will be. And most of all now.

  In tears.

  Oh, the world’s an awful place, and you know it is. I used to think something could be done about it; but I know better now. I hate it. I hate it.

  She comes forward slowly and brings six cubes from the bag.

  All right. All right. You can have them.

  ANTROBUS:

  Thank you, Sabina.

  SABINA:

  Can I have . . . can I have one to go to the movies?

  ANTROBUS in silence gives her one.

  Thank you.

  ANTROBUS:

  Good night, Sabina.

  SABINA:

  Mr. Antrobus, don’t mind what I say. I’m just an ordinary girl, you know what I mean, I’m just an ordinary girl. But you’re a bright man, you’re a very bright man, and of course you invented the alphabet and the wheel, and, my God, a lot of things . . . and if you’ve got any other plans, my God, don’t let me upset them. Only every now and then I’ve got to go to the movies. I mean my nerves can’t stand it. But if you have any ideas about improving the crazy old world, I’m really with you. I really am. Because it’s . . . it’s . . . Good night.

  She goes out. ANTROBUS starts laughing softly with exhilaration.

  ANTROBUS:

  Now I remember what three things always went together when I was able to see things most clearly: three things. Three things:

  He points to where SABINA has gone out.

  The voice of the people in their confusion and their need. And the thought of you and the children and this house. And . . . Maggie! I didn’t dare ask you: my books! They haven’t been lost, have they?

  MRS. ANTROBUS:

  No. There are some of them right here. Kind of tattered.

  ANTROBUS:

  Yes.—Remember, Maggie, we almost lost them once before? And when we finally did collect a few torn copies out of old cellars they ran in everyone’s head like a fever. They as good as rebuilt the world.

  Pauses, book in hand, and looks up.

  Oh, I’ve never forgotten for long at a time that living is struggle. I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for—whether it’s a field, or a home, or a count
ry. All I ask is the chance to build new worlds and God has always given us that. And has given us

  Opening the book

  voices to guide us; and the memory of our mistakes to warn us. Maggie, you and I will remember in peacetime all the resolves that were so clear to us in the days of war. We’ve come a long ways. We’ve learned. We’re learning. And the steps of our journey are marked for us here.

  He stands by the table turning the leaves of a book.

  Sometimes out there in the war,—standing all night on a hill—I’d try and remember some of the words in these books. Parts of them and phrases would come back to me. And after a while I used to give names to the hours of the night.

  He sits, hunting for a passage in the book.

  Nine o’clock I used to call Spinoza. Where is it: “After experience had taught me—”

  The back wall has disappeared, revealing the platform. FRED BAILEY carrying his numeral has started from left to right. MRS. ANTROBUS sits by the table sewing.

  BAILEY:

  “After experience had taught me that the common occurrences of daily life are vain and futile; and I saw that all the objects of my desire and fear were in themselves nothing good nor bad save insofar as the mind was affected by them; I at length determined to search out whether there was something truly good and communicable to man.”

  Almost without break HESTER, carrying a large Roman numeral ten, starts crossing the platform. GLADYS appears at the kitchen door and moves toward her mother’s chair.

  HESTER:

  “Then tell me, O Critias, how will a man choose the ruler that shall rule over him? Will he not choose a man who has first established order in himself, knowing that any decision that has its spring from anger or pride or vanity can be multiplied a thousand fold in its effects upon the citizens?”

  HESTER disappears and IVY, as eleven o’clock starts speaking.

  IVY:

  “This good estate of the mind possessing its object in energy we call divine. This we mortals have occasionally and it is this energy which is pleasantest and best. But God has it always. It is wonderful in us; but in Him how much more wonderful.”

  As MR. TREMAYNE starts to speak, HENRY appears at the edge of the scene, brooding and unreconciled, but present.

  TREMAYNE:

  “In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the earth; And the Earth was waste and void; And the darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Lord said let there be light and there was light.”

  Sudden black-out and silence, except for the last strokes of the midnight bell. Then just as suddenly the lights go up, and SABINA is standing at the window, as at the opening of the play.

  SABINA:

  Oh, oh, oh. Six o’clock and the master not home yet. Pray God nothing serious has happened to him crossing the Hudson River. But I wouldn’t be surprised. The whole world’s at sixes and sevens, and why the house hasn’t fallen down about our ears long ago is a miracle to me.

  She comes down to the footlights.

  This is where you came in. We have to go on for ages and ages yet.

  You go home.

  The end of this play isn’t written yet.

  Mr. and Mrs. Antrobus! Their heads are full of plans and they’re as confident as the first day they began,—and they told me to tell you: good night.

  Afterword

  Overview

  Thornton Wilder began writing The Skin of Our Teeth (then titled The Ends of the Worlds) on June 24, 1940, at the MacDowell Colony, the artists and writers retreat in Peterborough, New Hampshire, where Our Town had been born three years earlier. He was searching for a way to bear witness to a world increasingly at war, and he had been inspired, in part, by the way James Joyce had presented “ancient man as an ever-present double to modern man” in Finnegans Wake. Wilder coupled this note in his journal entry of July 6, 1940, with these quasi-hopeful words: “During the last year subject after subject presented itself and crumbled away in my hands. Can this one hold out?” Hold out it did, although not without many discouraging and—appropriately for the property—dramatic moments.

  During a nearly three-month stay that fall at the Château Frontenac in Quebec, a still deeper retreat from places where people knew him, Wilder completed much of the work on the first two acts. Significantly, he was now living among people who were officially at war. On November 13, he wrote his dramatic agent: “Scarcely dare talk about it; looks to me like the play’s prodigious. First two acts done. Not a sight or sound out of me until I return with the finished script, maybe as soon as Dec. 10.”

  He did not meet his deadline. On December 14, about to leave Quebec, Wilder wrote Robert Ardrey, a fellow playwright and his former student, “The new play is not finished yet after all. Heigh-ho. I swear I don’t know what I’ve got here. I just keep trying to bring into shape—it a fine idea, but very hard to do.”

  In the end, Act III, the war act, which Wilder found the most difficult to write, was not ready for Jed Harris, his director of choice, until January 1, 1942, a year later. Many honorable deeds and distractions came between Wilder and his goal of completing the play, among them a three-month trip on a cultural goodwill mission to Latin America for the Department of State, a summer term teaching a double course load at the University of Chicago, and an autumn trip to London as U.S. delegate to an international PEN conference. This last assignment offered him an opportunity to view actual war damage and to talk with courageous civilians, soldiers, and fighter and bomber pilots in England and Scotland. These encounters helped Wilder to begin to conceive for the end of the play a note about the survival of the human race that would be hopeful but not “trite” or “evasive,” words he used at the time. His search for the right words continued during the play’s rehearsal period until, as a last touch, he added George Antrobus’s final speech in the play: “We’ve come a long ways. We’ve learned. We’re learning. . . .”

  Several years later, in a 1948 letter to his brother, Amos, Wilder recalled this creative challenge:

  I’ve always assumed a very slow curve of civilization. But I always affirm too that my toleration of humanity’s failings is more affirmative than most “optimists.” When I first wrote Skin of Our Teeth it lacked that motto-humanity-climbing-upward speeches of Mr. Antrobus at the end. I assumed that they were omnipresent in the play and didn’t have to be stated. I assumed that they were self-evident,—that’s how highly I believed in mankind. But more and more of the early readers found the play “defeatist.” So I wrote in the moral and crossed the t’s and i’s.

  It was Wilder’s expectation that Jed Harris, who had produced and directed Our Town, would play the same roles for The Skin of Our Teeth. Harris turned him down, however. Wilder then offered the producer’s role to Michael Myerberg, an entertainment promoter who had worked as Leopold Stokowski’s manager. Wilder had known Myerberg casually for about five years, and did not consider his lack of Broadway experience a disadvantage. On the contrary, he made this unusual choice because he had no faith that, with the exception of the legendary Harris, any experienced Broadway producer could do justice to a drama that Wilder predicted to his attorney would “probably involve a complicated history.” He was right.

  Exuding just the fresh energy that Wilder was counting on, Myerberg orchestrated a production that included the exciting young director, Elia Kazan, and a galaxy of distinguished actors: Fredric March and Florence Eldridge as Mr. and Mrs. Antrobus; Montgomery Clift and Frances Heflin as Henry and Gladys; Florence Reed as the Fortune Teller; and the already legendary Tallulah Bankhead as Sabina. But almost immediately there were complications. Myerberg’s imperiousness, unpredictable moods, and indifference in handling budgets and people combined with Bankhead’s volatile temperament to make life unusually hellish for the cast as well as the author and his representatives.

  Bad feeling backstage did not at first compromise the quality of the production. Skin played to mostly favorable press and many a sold-out house in its four-wee
k, four-city tryout period in New Haven, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. Not that people necessarily understood a play that an out-of-town Variety story reported “bewilders, bemuses and befuddles while it amuses.” Had the reporter added the word “upsets” to the list, he would have scooped Wilder’s own assessment, written to his family soon after rehearsals had begun: “I think it’s a very good play, but it’s so daringly written as to theatre-mood that it may well puzzle and upset instead of amuse and move.”

  And upset it did. As long as there is Broadway lore, it will likely include stories of taxis lining up early to snag the fares of people fleeing The Skin of Our Teeth at the end of Act I or II, some even jamming their fists through the play’s posters along the way. According to Richard Maney, the play’s publicist, fifteen people walked out early at the world premiere in New Haven’s Shubert Theater on October 15, 1942. Hoping that knowledge might stem the tide, Myerberg ordered Maney to write a synopsis of the play to insert in the playbill. These words greeted the audience at the second performance:

  The Skin of Our Teeth is a comedy about George Antrobus, his wife and two children, and their general utility maid, Lily Sabina, all of Exelsior, New Jersey. George Antrobus is John Doe or George Spelvin or you—the average American at grips with destiny, sometimes sour, sometimes sweet. The Antrobuses have survived fire, flood, pestilence, the seven-year locusts, the ice age, the black pox and the double feature, a dozen wars and as many depressions. They have run many a gamut, are as durable as radiators, and look upon the future with a disarming optimism. Alternately bewitched, befuddled and becalmed, they are the stuff of which heroes are made—heroes and buffoons. They are true offspring of Adam and Eve, victims of all the ills that flesh is heir to. They have survived a thousand calamities by the skin of their teeth, and Mr. Wilder’s play is a tribute to their indestructibility.

  Out-of-town success is no guarantee of Broadway success, but in the case of Skin, which opened on November 18 at the Plymouth Theater in New York, it was. With few exceptions, reviews were strong, some even raves: “A dramatic bombshell”—Life; “Theater-going became a rare and electrifying experience”—New York Herald Tribune; “Quite sure to prove the supreme novelty of the theater season”—New York Daily News. Two especially influential tastemakers put the case this way: “One of the wisest and friskiest comedies written in a long time,” critic Brooks Atkinson wrote in the New York Times. Wilder’s friend, the critic and commentator Alexander Woollcott, called The Skin of Our Teeth “the nearest thing to a great play which the American theater has yet produced.” There were critics on the other side of the fence, of course. As a general comment, they found tricks rather than substance. “[It] dolls up its theme rather than dramatizes it,” said Time. “It is too overt, too garish, too sensational in the literal sense,” wrote the Commonweal reviewer.